At the end of a long day I am aware of the things I don’t do.
As a parent this is fairly universal.
Like a huge weight of failure that follows us round.

I don’t store the beans upside down.

If you store the beans upside down, or indeed many kinds of food cans with ring pulls, then when you open them all the thick stuff is at the top.
Turn it upside down over the pan, quick shake, everything plops out, no need to scrape out the tin.

It is so easy when you store the bean cans upside down.

I ALWAYS forget to store the bean cans upside down.

I know that if you put half a lemon in the dish washer the plates come out sparkly and fresh.
It must be ten years since I have actually done this. Even when I actually have half a lemon in the house and it ends up going manky I somehow manage to block out any connection with the dishwasher at all and throw it away.

Flat coke cleans toilets. Pour it in, leave for an hour, flush and scrub with the toilet brush.
Except in my house where it gets poured away.

The Proles’ drawers stick on their wardrobe.
I know that if I rub candle wax on the runners the problem will be gone.
I can see a candle from where I am sitting now.
It’s over there.
But the Proles are asleep (this is a lie, they are in bed but Prole1 is re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the third time and Prole2 is under the duvet with the cat, ‘cooking her dinner’ any way I can’t go in there now, it would be chaos)
Tomorrow I will forget all about it until I sit here again and look at that candle.

The things I could do with white wine vinegar and bi-carbonate of soda.
If I had any white wine vinegar.
If I had not removed the label from the bi-carbonate of soda and now can’t tell the bi-carbonate of soda from the baking powder or cream of tartar.
I should leave more labels on as well.

I take that back, those labels were rubbish.

I should have left them on though.

I don’t usually mind my failings.
To be honest I don’t often have coke in the house so I can almost forgive myself that.

It is more the principle of the thing.
I think culture tells us we should really be doing these things and the more we do them the more super beings we become.

I don’t want to be a Domestic Goddess (as far as I can tell there is no male equivalent to this, any how whatever it is I don’t need to be it) I think it is just entropy getting me down.
The tendency of the universe to revert to chaos.

I blame popular culture.
Specifically I blame Lucy Liu.

Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and by proxy any one who has ever starred in a ‘kickass’ action film ever.

Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, John Wayne even.

The problem is, they set out to do something and they just ‘do’ it.

In the film Charlie’s Angels the Angels are infiltrating the evil criminal’s base. Their strategy seems to be to be ‘kickass’.
They come out of the sea ‘kickass’. They remove wetsuits ‘kickass. They beat up bad guys ‘kickass’.
Lucy Liu goes up to the roof ‘kickass’ to set up a satellite link or something ‘kickass’. Something on the roof. It was ‘kickass’ anyway.

She arrives at her roof top destination with her ‘kickass’ computer satellite stuff but has no where to put it.
She reaches out her foot and ‘kickass’ flips a wooden crate onto it’s side and puts her techno ‘kickass’ stuff on it.

Even thinking about that moment depresses me.
I can’t do that.
Not with kids.

You know that you would take ages getting up the stairs making sure the Proles were using the bannister and then you would be all hot and be distracted or thinking about lunch and the crate would fall over and you would have to put everything down and pick it up again and then if you did get it back up one of the Proles would ask what you were doing and then use the crate as a drawing board or a fire engine or something.
And you could not stop them because you are too afraid of them falling off the edge of the roof.
And if you were trying to set up some kind of laptop satellite nonsense uplink thing the other Prole would just be asking if they could play Angry Birds.
What takes Lucy Liu a second and a half to achieve would take me several minutes and include a break for carrot sticks and a drink.

I could not even put the nappy change bag on the floor without it slowly slumping to one side, just out of reach of fingers, so I had to shuffle over and retrieve it, off balance and holding a squirmy child in the least ‘kickass’ way imaginable.

Nothing I do is ‘kickass’.

Please don’t get me wrong.
I have no desire to be Lucy Liu.
I don’t want to wear impractical leather wear and have ‘cute’ conversations with Drew Barrymore.
Really I don’t.